The village of Tai Tete is a 40-minute climb from the town of Maliana,
in the west of East Timor.

The rangy figure of Joana Fatima leads us along a small track to her
village. We walk past groves of lontar palm, clamber over black volcanic
rocks and skirt around the grounds of a crumbling, Portuguese-era
boarding school. As we get higher, the air thins and cools and we walk
through shady stands of pine and pass small clusters of traditional
thatched houses. Women pound rice and corn in waist-high wooden pestles;
toothless dogs howl at us; children stare. Life up here is a marginal,
hand-to-mouth existence. Most villagers live almost entirely outside the
cash economy, surviving on whatever they can grow or the livestock they
keep.

In such straitened circumstances, the generosity of Joana Fatima is all
the more remarkable.

Throughout the 1990s, during the last decade of Timor's war of
independence against Indonesia, Fatima played a crucial role as cook,
comforter and way station for Timorese freedom fighters.

This humble, matter-of-fact woman fed and sheltered dozens of guerrillas
in her one-room, thatched hut. The guerrillas would come down to Tai
Tete under cover of darkness, looking for a feed, a place to rest or
somewhere to recuperate if they were sick.

Some would eat, stay a few hours and go back to their hideouts; others
would stay a night or two, lying low inside the hut during daylight
hours.

No guerrilla was ever turned away, in spite of the enormous risks for
Fatima and her family.

Had they been discovered, they would almost certainly have been
interrogated and tortured.

"I could have been arrested, my husband could have been arrested or they
could have come and taken my daughters," says Fatima.

"But we believed in the struggle for our homeland, that's why we did
it."

The Timorese tradition of always serving guests the best food the host
has placed an added burden on Fatima. She and her family ate meat once a
month if they were lucky, but she says she would always try and rustle
up a chicken or the choicest vegetables for her guests.

While Fatima was the first point of call for the guerrillas, she didn't
operate alone. She was at the apex of a well-organised network of fellow
villagers other families would contribute food when they could and local
boys would act as security, on the look-out for Indonesian patrols. Even
those families who didn't actively support the guerrilla effort were
bound by an unspoken code of silence had any of them hinted to
Indonesian informers, soldiers or intelligence about the night- time
comings and goings, retribution would have been swift and unmerciful.

She still remembers most of the men she helped over the years, reeling
off the names of well- known former freedom fighters such as Gilberto
Brito, Lian Ba Oin, Rodak and Semo Sai.

And while she's proud of helping the guerrillas and the larger
resistance effort, it's a pride tinged these days with disappointment.

While many of the former soldiers she fed are now on government pensions
or have landed plum civil service jobs, she has received nothing for her
troubles no recognition and no pension. Only one former guerrilla ever
came back to thank her, bringing her a goat and a sack of rice.

Like most of her fellow villagers, Fatima still lives from the small
crops she grows and the livestock she raises. She has little money.

Her youngest girl, a bright 14-year-old named Nanda, wants to board at
an agricultural high school in a neighbouring town, but Fatima can't pay
for books, transport or for the student hostel where Nanda would stay.

"We were happy to support the resistance and [the guerrillas who were]
our children and our brothers," she says. "But they have a different
life to us now, some of them are big guys. We don't know whether they
remember us or not.

"It doesn't matter," she says matter-of-factly. "God is great.

The land here, the rocks, the fires that we used to cook on, they are
our witnesses, they saw what we sacrificed."

The only other proof she has of dedication to the resistance effort is a
receipt which she keeps carefully tucked away inside a plastic ID
envelope she wears around her neck. She takes out the receipt, issued by
the Council of National Resistance in April 1999, which calls on
"patriots" from across Timor to give to the war effort. She and her
husband each donated about $10, a considerable sum at the time. Not
being able to sign, they put their thumbprints on the receipts and
someone else has carefully printed their clandestine names Moving On
(Lao Ona) and Our Struggle (Ita Nian) under their thumbprints. The
former guerrilla who countersigned the receipt is now an MP in the
coalition Government in Dili.

But the only link Fatima has with him nowadays is his signature on a
carefully preserved
Canberra Times (Australia)

October 15, 2008
The forgotten

The Canberra Times

The village of Tai Tete is a 40-minute climb from the town of Maliana,
in the west of East Timor.

The rangy figure of Joana Fatima leads us along a small track to her
village. We walk past groves of lontar palm, clamber over black volcanic
rocks and skirt around the grounds of a crumbling, Portuguese-era
boarding school. As we get higher, the air thins and cools and we walk
through shady stands of pine and pass small clusters of traditional
thatched houses. Women pound rice and corn in waist-high wooden pestles;
toothless dogs howl at us; children stare. Life up here is a marginal,
hand-to-mouth existence. Most villagers live almost entirely outside the
cash economy, surviving on whatever they can grow or the livestock they
keep.

In such straitened circumstances, the generosity of Joana Fatima is all
the more remarkable.

Throughout the 1990s, during the last decade of Timor's war of
independence against Indonesia, Fatima played a crucial role as cook,
comforter and way station for Timorese freedom fighters.

This humble, matter-of-fact woman fed and sheltered dozens of guerrillas
in her one-room, thatched hut. The guerrillas would come down to Tai
Tete under cover of darkness, looking for a feed, a place to rest or
somewhere to recuperate if they were sick.

Some would eat, stay a few hours and go back to their hideouts; others
would stay a night or two, lying low inside the hut during daylight
hours.

No guerrilla was ever turned away, in spite of the enormous risks for
Fatima and her family.

Had they been discovered, they would almost certainly have been
interrogated and tortured.

"I could have been arrested, my husband could have been arrested or they
could have come and taken my daughters," says Fatima.

"But we believed in the struggle for our homeland, that's why we did
it."

The Timorese tradition of always serving guests the best food the host
has placed an added burden on Fatima. She and her family ate meat once a
month if they were lucky, but she says she would always try and rustle
up a chicken or the choicest vegetables for her guests.

While Fatima was the first point of call for the guerrillas, she didn't
operate alone. She was at the apex of a well-organised network of fellow
villagers other families would contribute food when they could and local
boys would act as security, on the look-out for Indonesian patrols. Even
those families who didn't actively support the guerrilla effort were
bound by an unspoken code of silence had any of them hinted to
Indonesian informers, soldiers or intelligence about the night- time
comings and goings, retribution would have been swift and unmerciful.

She still remembers most of the men she helped over the years, reeling
off the names of well- known former freedom fighters such as Gilberto
Brito, Lian Ba Oin, Rodak and Semo Sai.

And while she's proud of helping the guerrillas and the larger
resistance effort, it's a pride tinged these days with disappointment.

While many of the former soldiers she fed are now on government pensions
or have landed plum civil service jobs, she has received nothing for her
troubles no recognition and no pension. Only one former guerrilla ever
came back to thank her, bringing her a goat and a sack of rice.

Like most of her fellow villagers, Fatima still lives from the small
crops she grows and the livestock she raises. She has little money.

Her youngest girl, a bright 14-year-old named Nanda, wants to board at
an agricultural high school in a neighbouring town, but Fatima can't pay
for books, transport or for the student hostel where Nanda would stay.

"We were happy to support the resistance and [the guerrillas who were]
our children and our brothers," she says. "But they have a different
life to us now, some of them are big guys. We don't know whether they
remember us or not.

"It doesn't matter," she says matter-of-factly. "God is great.

The land here, the rocks, the fires that we used to cook on, they are
our witnesses, they saw what we sacrificed."

The only other proof she has of dedication to the resistance effort is a
receipt which she keeps carefully tucked away inside a plastic ID
envelope she wears around her neck. She takes out the receipt, issued by
the Council of National Resistance in April 1999, which calls on
"patriots" from across Timor to give to the war effort. She and her
husband each donated about $10, a considerable sum at the time. Not
being able to sign, they put their thumbprints on the receipts and
someone else has carefully printed their clandestine names Moving On
(Lao Ona) and Our Struggle (Ita Nian) under their thumbprints. The
former guerrilla who countersigned the receipt is now an MP in the
coalition Government in Dili.

But the only link Fatima has with him nowadays is his signature on a
carefully preserved receipt, testimony to her support for Timor's
hard-won independence.